Well my plates arrived last week (I think they are a bit wanky but it’s the same price for abc 123) so I decided to spend my weekend wacking the plates on (the original holes from the vict plates matched the nsw plate so it took all of 2 mins with the 18v Makita!) detailing the wheel wells, spraying the brake calipers and rotors & washing/scrubbing the brake dust that accumulates on the inside of the rims also.
Having rusty brakes and filthy wheel liners is a pet hate of mine, I have been itching to respray them basically since I picked the car up! Since the oem rims have a spoke design that is quite ‘open’ the braking & suspension components are left exposed were some other wheel designs have a chunkier profile which hides the braking components.
To be honest this is one area in terms of aesthetics that I’m disappointed with the bmw design, I have always loved the solid design of the body of the E92 (I always thought the body had a billet look to it - in terms of it looked like it had been machined from a billet) the brakes whilst work extremely well appearance wise they are bloody terrible! I did contemplate upgrading to bmw performance items, but after reading a few reviews for the outlay they didn’t offer much of an improvement. I’m also not the type to plaster my ride in m decals, & since my oem pads and rotors still had plenty of meat on them I just decided to stick with the oem theme and respray them silver.
Generally I respray my brake etc on other cars I have owned with vht high temp, but decided to go with the dupli color brake caliper paint (can be purchased @ SCA). The nozzle on the can drove me insane at first as it was difficult to spray an area in the exact location (due to the tight confines of a wheel you cant get a long sweeping motion in place) and I also found the paint to be extremely thin, and as a result you had to press the nozzle intermittently and be careful not to hold the nozzle down too long to avoid paint runs (the old warm water in a bucket trick to thin the paint is definitely not needed for this product!)
http://www.duplicolor.com/products/caliperPaint/
Upon jacking the car up, the first wheel I went to remove after removing the bolts it was literally stuck on. Since this is my first euro car I had remembered the beemers have a bolt on the rotors securing them on (the jap cars I have had the rotors have just slid off) I started to look for another bolt securing the wheel on the hub. I couldn’t find anything so I proceeded to belt it with a rubber mallet. After a while it eventually came off and it seems the wheel had frozen to the hub due to crevice corrosion.
To prevent this from re-occuring I decided to remove the corrosion by using a wire brush and 320 grit abrasive paper dousing the hubs in degreaser to remove the grime & then applying hi temp water proof grease and wd 40 to minimise the amount of corrosion making the wheel much easier to remove next time around (I also sprayed degreaser/wd40 inside the threaded holes in the hub to ensure the wheel bolts don’t freeze up).
The muck from inside the wheel liner, shocks, springs etc was doused in degreaser left to soak & hosed off and then a strong solution of hot dishwashing liquid & water was used to scrub the remaining grime. Once cleaned the plastic liners were then treated with wolf chemicals tire & trim dressing.
The BMS spacer was then applied to the wheel hub with the id coated in a thin layer of grease, the wheel well was then masked off along with the spacer. I have never done any ‘spray painting’ as such but from what I have picked up over the years you want a surface that is clean, dry, smooth & free of contaminants and an atmosphere that is warm with low humidity. I generally use a lamp to ‘preheat’ the work area & also helps ‘bake’ the paint once it has been applied and also aids in visibility also.
Whilst I was waiting for the paint to dry (10 minutes between re-coats by memory) I gave the wheels a wash with car shampoo and a scrubbing brush. It seems bmw have applied some form of wheel wax to these rims as it took little effort to remove the baked on brake dust from the rims.
For what appears to be a simple task it took me approx 10-12 hrs to get all 4 wheels done, but I’m much happier with the tider wheel arches and brake components. The duplicolor paint which was initially difficult to work with but by the fourth corner of the car I had pretty much became accustomed to using its unique and overly sensitive nozzle. The paint really is a great colour offering plenty of gloss and hopefully a durable long lasting finish also!
Pics of the car with 10mm & 15mm spacers fitted:
(The pics are shit 3mp nokia phone pics my canon DSLR battery was dead!)
On another note I recently purchased a cheap arcan tools low profile 1500kg jack from ebay for $200 (turns out they are a Costco item and can be had for as little as $160 if you’re a Costco member) and it is a great jack for the price. I had stuffed around for years with my cheap $50 jack that I had purchased when I was 1st year fitter/machinist apprentice, it makes the car so much easier to jack up with its low height, light weight which makes it easy to manoeuvre and jacking up the car takes little to no effort at all.
I have also purchased some AR design catless downpipes and a set of LUX V3 H8 globes which I can’t wait to install!
The AR pipes in conjunction with the procede ecu BMS DCI will hopefully yield some decent power gains
(somewhere in the vicinity of 250-260 kw atw)
The next DIY task in store is a full paint correction, whilst I have received lots of compliments on how glossy and immaculate the paint is, the truth is space grey is excellent for masking defects! Upon certain lighting when you scrutinise the car plenty of swirls & heavy scuff defects can be detected, but the paint is still glossy and water beads quite well which is a testament to whatever sealant was used on the car originally my guess is that the car hasn’t had a full detail from when it was purchased from BMW Rushcutters 2 ½ years ago.